game?
Roy thinks it was good form
England’s right-back, Glen Johnson, brought to the Peru game in England’s last warm up game at home before the World Cup.
I would suggest he, Johnson, brought the form that helped Liverpool ship a record number of goals for them in a 38 game league campaign that saw them slip up with one hand on the Premier League title.
Everybody with half a brain who watched England’s three nil victory over Peru at Wembley could see that Johnson had a shocker against a relatively inexperienced B or C side.
Roy’s got half a brain, I just don’t know what he was doing with it on Friday night. He’s got a blind-spot when it comes to Johnson. That’s why we’ve pretty much seen Johnson – bar the odd Walker inclusion – as the default right-back throughout Roy’s spell as manager.
Something which again has highlighted the stupidity with which successive England managers approach international friendlies. Instead of checking out possibles they stick with the usuals. Playing people that they know inside and out instead of giving a kid a try, see if they’re up to it.
You feel they don’t want to rock the boat or end up having to make a hard decision. When pundits say there’s two players vying for a spot and it’s a nice headache for the manager to have
. No it’s not, they don’t want that headache, they don’t want to have to chose, especially if it means dropping an established player. It came as a real shock when Roy did it with Ashley Cole but he couldn’t quite cut the player off completely and offered him a standby spot.
Roy also said that after that performance Johnson had no need to consult Roy’s assistant Gary Neville on how to actually defend.
Now I had a go at Neville on here a while back – probably around the 2006 World Cup – but that was over his somewhat predictably one dimensional forward play with Beckham in front of him but he could always defend and he new that was his primary role in the England set up.
Also I wouldn’t put Neville down as the type that didn’t try and get better, try and improve just because he was at a top club and an established international. Johnson on the other hand looks the type and the fact that he can play as he did against Peru and not go looking for help from an England coach suggest he is the type that thinks he has nothing to learn.
Well he’s got over caps now along with numerous clubs – though talk of him being a QPR target is very telling of his abilities, especially in defence – and with his attitude he frankly probably is beyond learning something new – like defending but the fact he and more importantly Roy don’t see how a bit of coaching from a good ex-player couldn’t hurt is damning of both.